Redemption Through The Rejected

“Blessed are the poor.” Only St. Luke’s gospel tells us this. St. Luke never was a Jew. He was always an outsider.

The poor, women, the Blessed Mother, Luke tells us stories of how Jesus loved and lived with these people. Tenderness, love, pity, respect, all of these characterize Jesus when he comes into contact with the people who were not in power. Face it, most of us do not our lives wielding power. St. Luke’s lessons are everyday lessons in love. There is so much to learn from this gospel!

written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

The interesting thing about the Gospel of St. Luke is that the Gospel of St. Luke was written by a Greek.  A Gentile.  He doesn't have his origin in the Holy Land.  He doesn't have his origin where Jesus walked.  He has his origin in Syria, Antioch.

And that changes the perspective.  But it brings to mind something very interesting.  There is a book, if you guys are into things like this, from a man by the name of Ronald Starks and basically he uses sociological principles to examine early Christianity.  It's fascinating.  It's a lot of hand waving, but it is fascinating.

And my engineers in the back understand us and they can even have names for it.  If you take a, say a group of five thousand people and you say that that group will increase by 10% every ten years, that is a significant growth factor.  And so that after a period of time, starting with five thousand, the five thousand will be a majority in the Roman empire in another 300 years.  I first ran across it when we were dealing with people who had long term injuries and we were putting the money in trust and compounding the interest, especially in the period of time when the interest rates were very high, so someone having a million dollars worth of damages and you put it into a trust at 15% over a 40 year period, all of sudden they own the United States because of the exponential effect.

The question that you have in the early Church with Luke being with Paul, being a Gentile, is how many Christians were there?  If there was a small group, then it’s fairly exceptional that we get writers such as Mark, Luke, John, Matthew, Paul, Peter, James, who write extremely well.  That is unusual coming out of a group that if you assume the group was 5000 and grew all the way up to 10,000 in a period of 20 years, that’s still an exceptional group.  How big was the group, and how does that group impact upon what is written, specifically in the gospel of Luke?

We have a situation, as I've told you, Luke was not Jewish.  Luke apparently got converted through Paul… his preaching… joined Paul, and did research.  He wasn't simply satisfied to sit back and listen.  And he went and listened to the Blessed Mother and probably the others.  But he listened to the teachings of Christ, not from a Jewish perspective, but from a Gentile perspective.  All the rest of the world.  And he heard and he articulates things that we don't find in the other gospels, not because they weren't taught but because their significance is different.  And that's what you have when you have a population that is growing and expanding.  And what we find...

Oh, good morning!

What we find in Luke that I just absolute love are two emphases that are not pushed as hard in the other Gospels as they are in Luke.  The first thing is, when you look at the beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit,” in Mark and Matthew; in Luke it is, "Blessed are the poor."  The physically poor or the spiritually poor, but the poor themselves is the point of emphasis and there is a tremendous emphasis upon taking care of the poor.

This is clearly something that is in the teachings of Jesus in all of the gospels but it is emphasized more in St. Luke because a lot of the things, when we hear Pope Francis, and we hear about giving to the poor, it's coming through Luke.

The other thing that is revolutionary in Luke: women!  Luke has such a profound and deep respect for women as reflected by the actions of Jesus. The profound respect that he has for the Blessed Mother.  The actions between Jesus and Mary and Martha.  His friends, who generally tend to include a lot of women.  The Samaritan woman.  The woman who is accused of adultery.  Jesus' perspective, as expressed by Luke, is a perspective of a great deal of respect that was very, very counter-cultural during that period of time and even today provides us a radical perspective on how to treat women.

Jesus, if, I'm trying to think...if Mayve and I were working in the same office, and Mayve was the boss… there is a reaction of a lot of men, and women, "I can work for anybody, but I'm not going to work for a woman."  "That's her opinion; I don't need to listen to her opinion."  Now that's changing somewhat, in my experience.  But when I first started practicing law, that was the mentality.

The other thing is, the woman as subordinate.  This is part of the "Me, too," movement, no matter what you think about it, is all about.  It is, if these men are doing what is described, and I'll pick on Betty this time, Mayve, and I treat Betty without the respect that she deserves as a creature of God, created in His image, for whom Jesus Christ died, I am committing a sin.  That is totally and completely unacceptable by the teachings of Christ, particularly as represented in the gospel of Luke.

Luke's gospel goes to the Gentiles.  Jesus, within the context of Israel, was a revolutionary leader.  There was no question.  He overturned and was undoing thousands of years of Jewish teachings.

But Jesus, the teacher, as going out to the Gentile world, especially through the gospel of Luke, but I've no doubt through the preaching of St. Paul, too, was also revolutionary.  And Jesus in our lives, the teachings are revolutionary on how we deal with people.  We don't treat old people, like John, with disrespect because he's an old person.  "Oh John, I mean, John can't even read stuff out of a book.  He needs to have great big writing.  We don't have to listen to John."  "We certainly don't need to listen to women."  "You're not supposed to smile unless your husband says its all right.  What's wrong with you?"  "Hey, cutie!"  No!  No, no, no!

And that's one of the things that we have to keep in mind in our lives.  That is that the gospel, again, especially because of Luke because this is Luke's day, is a revolutionary thing in our lives. It changes our perspective on the world, how we deal with the world, how we view our relationships with everybody else.  It is revolutionary.  And, it is the path to heaven.

The revolution of, "Oh my gosh, you mean I've got to treat her with respect?  To look at her as something other than as an object?   Oh, gol-lee, what do you want me to do?  You can't change my life."  "You mean I've got to be nice to old men?  Oh, give me a break!"

Yes! Yes!  We have to look for the poor among us and take care of them.  We have to look for those who are in need.  We have to look at them as being special.  And not all of you have heard this.  I still love the first teaching of Pope Francis, on Lent, where he comes out and says, "These women, these lowly women, these old lowly people, these poor people, these minorities, these disabled, all of these people who are not as special as they are, are more special than you are because THEY are giving YOU the means to salvation.

Everybody that you look upon as being less than you, is better than you because YOU are not giving THEM salvation.  You are giving her respect.  You're giving alms.  You are taking care of them.  But THEY, by their willingness to accept and by their condition in and of itself and your relationship with them, are giving YOU the means to salvation.

October 18,2018

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